Andy McNab - Crossfire

She looked at Dom, but I jumped in. 'Great job, Kate. When you get back to the office, could you ring them back and say there won't actually be any filming today? Dom just wants to come over and talk round the idea, get it fixed in everyone's heads. We'll probably bring the cameras along on Friday, at some city location. You know, dramatic backdrop, that sort of thing. Can you do that? I don't want them expecting men with furry microphones and all that shit.'

She nodded and drank the last of her cappuccino.

Dom handed her the flowers. 'Katarzyna, Moira doesn't need to know what's happening yet. It must stay completely secret until we have the foundations of the story. Once that's done, I'm going to make sure you're on my team and not sitting at her beck and call any more.'

She smiled her thanks to us both. The thought of not working for that bitch must have been the best news she'd had in weeks.

I stood and shook her hand. 'Thanks, Kate. You've been fantastic.'

She left and we sat down to finish our brews.

Dom's brow furrowed. 'What's the score if we didn't shake them off? Aren't we putting her in danger?'

'Even if they follow her back to the station, all they'll want to know is what she handed over. They're not going to compromise themselves by lifting and threatening newsroom staff. They're pond-life, mate. They'll want to keep all this down in the weed.'

He took another sip and wiped the froth from his scabby top lip. We still looked like a couple of crash victims but, fuck it, there was nothing we could do about that. And on the upside, it meant Dom wasn't getting recognized every time he turned round.

'What now?'

I flicked through the printouts in Kate's folder. Judging by the number of representatives they had on the city council, Sinn Fein must have pulled out as many stops down here as they had up north. Connor was thinner and greyer than he had been when I'd last seen him. His picture showed him in the classic shoulders-at-forty-five-degrees-to-the-camera pose. He was doing his best to look like everyone's favourite uncle, and his best wasn't good enough.

It was no surprise to me that he'd switched careers. Former terrorists were turning into statesmen everywhere on the planet. Israeli bombers killed British soldiers on the streets of Jerusalem and were rewarded with invitations to dinner in Downing Street. The ANC was a proscribed terrorist organization, then went on to run South Africa. Even Hamas was now the voters' friend. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before bin Laden became secretary general of the UN.

The Peace Process had produced the same result in Ireland, but that didn't mean everything in the garden was rosy. Even before 9/11, when the Americans had their first really big taste of the realities of terrorism, the IRA hadn't just raised funds in Boston and New York from tenth-generation Irishmen who thought that PIRA were freedom-fighters who played the fiddle in pubs in their spare time. They'd also made a fortune domestically from gambling, extortion, prostitution and bank robbery.

But their biggest earner had always been drugs. The police and the army were too busy getting shot at and bombed, so there had been no one around to stop it. The IRA kneecapped drug-dealers periodically as a public-relations exercise, but only as a punishment for going freelance.

Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley might now be having a kiss and a cuddle at Stormont, and Martin McGuinness might be the Minister of Education, but deep down in the belly of the island, old habits died hard. There was just too much money at stake and they didn't want anyone else muscling in. Drugs were their big thing. They'd been running the trade for the last thirty-odd years. And it was even easier to cross the border now the army checkpoints had gone.

I closed the folder. 'First you buy me some decent clothes, then we clean ourselves up here, bowl along to City Hall and ask Councillor McNaughten to help us find Finbar.'

'Easy as that? What are you going to ask him? Why don't you tell me, Nick?' Dom's frustration was plain to see. I hadn't told him what I was planning, and I didn't intend to.

I smiled. 'Connor and I go back a long way. He'll help us, believe me.'

'But how?'

I stood up, ready to go. 'Whichever way I want him to. Come on, let's get sorted out. It'll give whoever's following us time to pick us up again.'

We were being followed. The green Seat MPV was three behind us, but I couldn't tell Dom yet. If the driver of the cab taking us towards Donovan O'Rossa Bridge was the excitable sort, he'd either drive us off the road or pull up by the first cop he saw.

It was very shoddy surveillance. The two of them bobbed about non-stop, trying to see where we were. They buzzed in and out of our lane to check we were still ahead. They couldn't have been more obvious if they'd tried. In fact, they were so amateur I wondered if they were doing it to scare us. I didn't care: it was good news either way.

I leant towards the driver. 'Tell you what, mate, if we pass a newsagent, could you pull over?'

He stopped almost immediately outside a Spar. I nudged Dom. 'I'm getting a paper, mate. You coming in?'

I didn't bother to look at the Seat as it passed. Dom was soon up alongside me. 'What's happening?'

'We've got a tail.' We walked into the shop and I pulled a copy of An Phoblacht, the Sinn Fein weekly, from the rack. The front page was one big picture of Gerry Adams walking out of a polling station under the headline 'Ready for Government'. I waved it at Dom as I headed for the counter. 'I've been in this a few times myself. Not by name, of course.'

He wasn't sure if I was joking. 'How do you know?'

'We'll soon confirm if they pick us up again. Don't worry, it's a good thing.'

The green Seat soon slipped in behind us once more, and stayed glued to our rear bumper all the way to Wood Quay. As we got out, they moved slowly past us and I made sure they knew I'd pinged them. The driver wore a black nylon bomber jacket, his passenger a green one. Both had dark, very short hair, just one above a crew-cut.

They'd made the wrong choice with the people-carrier: they looked seriously out of place in it. It was a vehicle for mothers with baby chairs and screaming kids off to football practice, not two hard-looking mass murderers packing out the front. But I knew why they needed it. They planned to pack out the back with the two of us.

Dom paid off our cab and it nosed out into the traffic. We walked up to the steps. 'Fuck me, mate, they're either Loyalists or Aryan Brotherhood – not that there's a shitload of difference.'

Concern was etched all over Dom's face. 'Why did you give them the eye?'

'We want to flush out the Yes Man, and we've got no time for finesse. I want him to know that we know he's on to us, so he realizes the clock's ticking.'

We reached the main entrance to the council offices and I tapped Dom's shoulder with the rolled-up paper. 'The Yes Man will be racking his brains trying to work out what we're up to. But he won't leave things to chance indefinitely. As soon as he sees we're alone, and it's quiet, he'll come for us. There's a good chance it will be tonight – so we've got to be ready for them.'

We pushed our way through the glass doors.

'Why do you call him the Yes Man?'

'Because it's the only word he ever wants to hear.'

We were in the foyer of a grey, four-storey 1980s concrete and glass building. The reception area was a sea of disabled access and no-smoking signs and earnest, probation-officer-type faces. Big posters celebrated the fact that Dublin kids were painting for Africa and that the council were friends of clean air, leading the way in bio-fuels and zero emissions. I felt healthier just standing there.